By David Millikin
Agence France-Presse, 11 January 2007
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Hundreds of US diplomats and other civilians will deploy in Iraq's battle-scarred countryside as part of President George W. Bush's last-ditch drive to stabilize the nation, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said.
"We are ready to strengthen, indeed to 'surge', our civilian efforts", Rice told Congress as she described plans to rebuild Iraq's economy in parallel with a bid by a reinforced US military to curb violence in the country.
"Success in Iraq relies on more than military efforts alone -- it also requires robust political and economic progress," she said.
Bush unveiled his long-awaited new strategy for Iraq Wednesday night, announcing that 21,500 troops would be added to the current deployment of 132,000 soldiers, primarily to fight insurgents in and around Baghdad.
Bush also said Washington would spend an additional billion dollars on reconstruction and that the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had pledged another 10 billion dollars to rebuilding and economic development.
Rice said a key element of the new strategy will involve getting US diplomats out of the isolation of the heavily fortified "green zone" that surrounds the US embassy in Baghdad and into the countryside.
"In total, we seek to deploy hundreds of additional civilians across Iraq to help Iraqis build their nation," said said.
The civilians will work in an expanded network of Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT) tasked with helping Iraqis develop local economic projects and provide jobs to lure Iraqis from the anti-US insurgency, she said.
The Bush administration has already sent 21 billion dollars to Iraq for civilian reconstruction projects, including efforts by 10 existing PRTs to rebuild key infrastructure like electricity production and water treatment.
But after nearly four years in the country, there is little to show for the investment, as many of the projects were destroyed or damaged by insurgents and significant sums have been lost to corruption.
Electricity and oil production remain below pre-war levels and unemployment estimates run from 25 to 40 percent nationwide.
Rice said the number of PRTs would be expanded to 18, increasing the number in Baghdad from one to six and in Anbar province, a hotbed of insurgency, from one to four.
The new push will also focus on smaller scale projects which can show immediate benefits for the population rather than on the bigger infrastructure schemes tried in the past.
"Our economic efforts will be more targeted on specific local needs with proven records of success, like micro-credit programs," Rice said.
Rice named a retired diplomat, Timothy Carney, to run the program from Baghdad as Coordinator for Iraq Transitional Assistance.
A former ambassador to Haiti and Sudan, Carey was part of the first civilian team deployed to Iraq after the 2003 invasion, but remained in the country for only a few months.
The Washington Post reported Thursday that Carney was first approached about the new job on Tuesday in a sign of the last-minute nature of Bush's new Iraq plan.
In interviews and Congressinal testimony Thursday to sell the Bush plan to a skeptical nation, Rice stressed that the lion's share of the burden for rebuilding and stabilizing Iraq lay with the Iraqi government.
"Our mission is to help, and I emphasize help, the Iraqis," she told a Senate panel, adding that the US commitment "will not be indefinite".
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Citation: David Millikin. "US also plans civilian "surge" in Iraq," Agence France-Presse, 11 January 2007.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070111/pl_afp/usiraqreconstruction_070111194205
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